


Incorrect password. Try again.

by Othalla



Category: Naruto
Genre: BAMF Haruno Sakura, BAMF Yamanaka Ino, Drugs, Exorcisms, F/F, Gen, Ghosts, Homecoming, Humor, Kakashi is a werewolf, M/M, POV Uzumaki Naruto, References to Drugs, Sakura is a necromancer, Sasuke is possessed, Uzumaki Naruto Being an Idiot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-07-10 06:47:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15943964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Othalla/pseuds/Othalla
Summary: In which a junky priest saves the day. Kind of.





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**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mornelithe_falconsbane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mornelithe_falconsbane/gifts).



> Super thanks to my lovely beta [the_rck](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_rck/pseuds/the_rck), who made this fic tons better and deserve all the praise!  
> And also super thanks to Morne, for requesting the things. It was a very fun fic to write. :)

Naruto strolls down the cobblestone path whistling a happy tune.

It’s a perfect day. The sun is out and shining, all clouds are gone (so not perfect for Shikamaru, but meh, lazybones can live), and the smell of trees is particularly strong in the soft breeze. Also, Naruto’s in Konoha, which is amazing! After a years long journey of peace and love (where Naruto has learned things such as kissing being nice, and, uh, other stuff that is vital for a young man to know), returning home feels a little like he’s found himself all over again. Not to say travelling isn’t fun. It definitely is. 

Sometimes, though, it can be a bit lonely. Especially since he didn’t have Jiraiya to bug this time out.  

He’s missed his team more than a little. 

Conveniently, he finds them just a short way from the main gates on the northern side of the village. They’re standing a bit further down the road, past the market stands with their fruits and crafts. Kakashi is leaning against a brick wall, all cool like, scratching his chin. Sasuke stands right next to him, holding his hands in front of himself in a manner similar to Hinata. Which strikes Naruto as weird, but whatever. Maybe Sasuke is vying for a new aspect of cool? Naruto wouldn’t know. Sasuke’s concept of cool doesn’t really match Naruto’s even on the best of days.

Sakura and Ino stand in front of them. They’re arguing loudly, with big gestures and hostile glares, but that’s nothing new. Sakura and Ino arguing is par for the course of their lifelong friendship, but it’s mostly a habit at this point really. If they ever _stop_ , on the other hand, that’ll be cause for concern.

Sakura elbows Ino gently (kind of, it’s  _Sakura_ ) in the side, but instead of elbowing Sakura in return. like Naruto expects, Ino turns bright red and starts.

Naruto stops his slow jog to raise an eyebrow.  _Huh_. That’s interesting.

Then he grins widely. His friends have grown up!

With that happy thought in mind, he almost doesn’t notice the sudden change the mood of the street has taken until it’s just about too late. Sakura’s chakra flares wildly and every speck of dust on the cobblestones is blown away by a fierce gust. A balding man that Naruto hadn’t noticed before collapses on his ass before her, trembling.

Sakura glares at the civilian something fierce. Then she moves to close the distance between them, her fist raised. It doesn’t look like a fistbump.

“Oh my  _god_ ,” Naruto says and throws himself at his friend. Not in the hug-like manner he’d envisioned before, but more like he imagines a teacher (Iruka) would throw themselves at a student (Naruto) in order to stop them from accidentally drinking something not-very-good-for-them (bleach, it was definitely bleach). “Sakura please don’t kill civilians! They’re weak and,” Naruto struggles to come up with a good reason but his mind is unfortunately blank. Grasping for a straw, he blurts out: “And they have germs!”

Surely, as a medic Sakura isn’t fond of germs? At least he doesn’t think she should be. 

Hopefully.

It seems Naruto shouldn’t have bothered worrying about making sense, though. Sakura doesn’t even seem to have heard him. She’s also, apparently, even more badass than he remembers because she takes no notice of Naruto hanging on her waist like a limpet. Instead, she keeps moving to punch the man. Like to really, really punch the man _hard_. Because she’s Sakura and that’s her thing. Obviously it’s not a good thing in this case, because the guy is clearly not used to taking punches and would dissolve like a paper towel in a hurricane if she so much as flicks her finger in his direction, but generally Naruto appreciates Sakura punching people lots. Just to be clear. 

Sakura punching people has saved Naruto from many troublesome situations in the past and is generally a good way of ending a fight quickly. Not many people can take a hit from her and stay standing, after all.

Naruto turns to look at the rest of his team, pleading for help. But nope, no dice. Sasuke is hiding behind Ino, (probably not the most strategically sound option considering Ino’s general approach to boys in her space after she hit puberty and discovered girls for realsies), and Kakashi has somehow ended up on the ground scratching himself behind his ear with his foot.

Which is very nearly the weirdest thing Naruto has seen these last few years. Naruto’s kind of impressed with Kakashi, to be honest, there’s some serious bending skills required in order to fold yourself quite like that. Especially since Kakashi’s like, super old by this point probably.

Gai is a lucky man, to be sure. Reckless, but lucky.

But yeah, gods almighty, bendy or not Naruto’s old teacher is no use in stopping this pink rampage, and neither is Sasuke as he’s clearly having a really fucking weird reaction to kind of normal mayhem. So, it’s up to Naruto to deal with it.

He squares his shoulders and digs his feet in the ground, trying to do the work of a hundred with zero backup.

It sort of works. Sakura doesn’t really stop moving, but Naruto hadn’t really expected that to be honest. He does, however, manage to slow her down enough that he has a split second for making a bunch of clones to hurl themselves between her fist and the man’s head.

The clones appear, and Sakura brings her fist down upon them, one after another.

For a good minute, the street is filled with the smoke of dead clones. Naruto winces when he gets the extra memories.

_ Yikes _ .

One thing is certain, Sakura has definitely been working out in the time that Naruto has been away. Those punches hurt more than he remembers from their last spar. Like, _way_ more.

Naruto feels her relax slightly in his hold. When the smoke clears, and it’s obvious the man has run away, he releases her. Looking incredibly unimpressed, she turns to him. 

Then she smiles. “What was that?” she asks in a sweet but super evil tone.

Naruto feels chills crawl up his spine. He elects to ignore them. (He’s chill like that.)

“Reasonability!” he says and finger guns in her direction to move past the weirdness of what he just said. Because, like, he’s not  _used_  to being the reasonable person on the team. (Which is, you know, quite a big thing for a person to admit? He’s being super adult-like, and Iruka should definitely reward him with ramen later because this is some major character growth happening.) But yeah, anyway.  _Usually_  he’s not the one in charge of reining in other people before they, uh,  _accidentally_ kill a somewhat innocent old-guy-village-man that should know better than to - probably? - be annoying to cool-shinobi-village-people-that-Naruto-hasn’t-seen-in-ages-and-misses-terribly-cause-they’re-great.

Which is not to say that Naruto’s the one who usually goes about  _accidentally_  murdering people, (because that’s so not his style, he’s a _good guy_ ) but still. He doesn’t remember Sakura being quite that quick to the punch.

“It’s my new thing,” he continues after a long beat of silence, when it seems like none of the people left on the street (himself, his team, and Ino. Everyone else has gone poof as fast as Naruto’s clones did) feels like helping him out. “It’s like, I figure someone had to step up to the plate and be the chillaxed guy who don’t like to punch people? When, uh, the majority of the people on the team like to punch people. With their fists.”

Sakura smile increases in brightness dramatically, and fuck that is really super creepy.

“No offence?” he offers. But yeah,  _nope_ , that does not help.

She places her fist in her hand and squeezes hard enough that the bones in her hand audibly grind together.

To their left, Ino sighs and fans herself. Sasuke, on the other hand, whimpers and looks wide-eyed around himself, somehow managing to glue himself to Ino’s back and get away with it. Then again, Ino’s definitely distracted. Naruto could probably do a striptease while singing a jaunty tune and she wouldn’t notice a thing.

Not that he plans to, mind you, but still. He  _could_ , if he wanted to.

“Naruto,” Sakura says solemnly, “ _no offence_ , but I hate you right now. That guy was  _perfect_. He had the right face, the right body type, even the right personality! Do you know how rare that is? It’s taken me  _years_  to build up my collection.”

Naruto gapes at her. “Wait a minute,” he says, growing increasingly horrified as his mind works through the implications. “You wanted to  _bone that?_  The guy was like, fifty! And also super not hot, like, blergh.” He shudders just thinking about it.

In the background, Kakashi perks up, ears practically twitching forward even though they were supposed to be normal human ears last time Naruto checked. “Bone? I like bones,” Kakashi says plaintively. “Do you have a bone?”

Naruto decides to ignore him. There is only so much a person can handle in a minute, and Naruto’s way past his limit.

“Bone him?” Sakura repeats, sounding confused. Then her face turns red with realisation, and it isn’t even the fun kind of red. “ _Naruto_ ,” she hisses, “I just want him for his body. I don’t want to  _bone_  him.”

“Oh my god, Sakura,  _that’s worse_! I don’t want to hear about your sex life!” Naruto says loudly. It’s a little bit of a lie, as he loves to gossip about sex and relationships of all kinds, but yeah,  _nope_. Not that particular kind of sex life maybe. “Ino doesn’t deserve having to share space in your fantasies with that.” He gestures with a hand in the direction the man went when he ran away.

Sakura glares death at him. “Not like that, moron! I want to kill him to  _use_  his corpse.”

Naruto spends a moment with his mouth wide open before he remembers to close it.  _Dear lord almighty_.

“You’re into  _dead people_?” he asks, voice shrill in spite of his efforts to accept Sakura for who she apparently is. “Sakura, that’s gross!”

She looks at him like he’s super dumb. (Which is a bit unfair, as he’s mostly only somewhat dumb.) ”I am not _into_ dead people,” she says slowly, enunciating each word. 

“Are you sure?” Naruto uncertainly shifts on his feet. “Because I got to tell you, I’m not feeling very convinced right now. What with the whole, uh, using people’s corpses deal you’ve got going on.”

Sakura audibly grinds her teeth, and her eyes flash dangerously.

Naruto prepares to get the hell out of Dodge.

“I am _not_ ,” she says and takes a step closer, “ _into_ -”

“Oh my god,” Ino says loudly.

Sakura pauses in her advance on him to look questioningly at her probably girlfriend. Naruto mirrors her action.

Ino has her mouth wide open, and her eyes flick rapidly between Naruto and Sakura, like she can’t quite believe what she’s seeing.

“You don’t know,” she says, and it’s not so much a question as it is a statement.

Naruto blinks. “I don’t know?”

Ino waves her hands in his direction, looking quite agitated. “You don’t know!” she repeats, sounding almost strangled. Then she snorts. Loudly. “Oh my god, this is incredible.”

“Ino, honey,” Sakura says, sounding a bit worried. “What are you talking about?”

Ino laughs. 

Behind her, Sasuke frowns and gets up, moving stiffly away from her to go lean, all sullen like, against a wall. (Which seems more like a Sasuke thing to do, and Naruto is quietly relieved because he is very confused at the moment and likes the familiarity of the action.) Neither Ino nor Sakura pay their former crush any attention.

“Sakura, he doesn’t know about the necromancy add on.” Ino forces the words out, finally, bringing up a hand to wipe away her tears. “He honestly doesn’t _know_.”

Sakura blinks slowly. “But I wrote him letters.”

Before he thinks better of it, Naruto says: “You did?” Which, in hindsight, isn’t a smart thing to have done. It brings Sakura’s focus back to him, and oh fuck, her frown has grown a frown of its own.

“Naruto,” she begins ominously. He can practically see the dark energy wafting off her. “Did you forget to read my letters?”

Like a switch has gone off in his mind, suddenly he remembers. 

_ Oh, fuck _ . He’s definitely in the shit pit, now.

Back before Naruto set out on his journey, team seven had discussed ( _at mind-numbing length_ ) how to best manage communication. Being the crappy dyslexic writer that he was, everyone had agreed that Naruto could just send home a toad with a verbal message every once in a while. No one particularly wanted to try and read his squiggles, which was fair. Naruto himself can barely decipher what he’s written most times. 

The rest of team seven didn’t have toads, though, and it wouldn’t be efficient for them to wait for Naruto to remember to write first because he was definitely going to forget. The toads were also pretty finicky. Getting them to wait around for letters once every few months was going to cost Konoha a _lot_ of candy. Neither Kakashi nor Sasuke had offered up their summons, either. Something about them having more dignity that that. 

After much discussion, everyone else had decided that the best way to send messages to him was through a sealed scroll thingy, that worked by a mysterious mechanism that Naruto could not hope to understand. But he had got the gist of it. Kind of. 

Whatever. All he had to do was put some chakra in a seal and say some fancy words and then he’d get a letter. It was a good plan, sure to work. 

Problem was, Naruto had discovered a few months into his journey, that he’d quite forgotten the password. None of the obvious choices had worked, either, and Naruto had tried them all! He’d made note to ask for it the next time he sent Gamakichi home to tell everyone about his adventures, trying to come up with a smooth way to stick it into conversation that wouldn’t end up with too much of a chewing when he eventually came back. 

But, well, then he’d quite forgotten about the thing entirely.

Naruto scratches the back of his head and laughs nervously. “Ehehe. Nope?”

For a moment, all he can hear is the sound of his own heartbeat. It goes _thump thump thump_ at an increasingly faster rate as the silence drags on and on.

Sakura’s face is devoid of expression.

“That was quite stupid, Naruto,” Kakashi says pleasantly from a distance away, safe from Sakura’s anger. “I’m very disappointed in you.”

Naruto looks wide eyed and tearful at his former teacher, silently begging for help.

Kakashi gives him none. Instead, he backs away slowly, totally leaving Naruto flapping in the wind.

“Don’t kill him, dearest,” Ino says and kisses Sakura on her forehead. “For all that he’s an idiot, sometimes he can be quite useful.” 

Turning away from Sakura, Ino sends Naruto a look that is very clear in what it’s meant to convey. 

_ You owe me, handsome blond wanderer _ . Or something in that ballpark. Which is fair, because if Ino managed to chill her girlfriend even a little bit, Naruto has a much greater chance of getting out of the inevitable throwdown alive.

“Let’s go to the tower and notify our overlord of this particularly idiotic act of your teammate, buzzkill.” With that, Ino grabs hold of Sasuke’s wrist and pulls him along. He goes without protest, looking blankly around himself, like he’s not quite sure where he is. 

Kakashi saunters after them. He gives a jaunty wave in Naruto’s direction as they disappear from sight.

Then Naruto is alone with the scariest person on the planet.

“I wrote to you a letter every week, Naruto,” Sakura says, and she doesn’t sound quite like herself. Her voice is tight. Hurt, almost. “And you didn’t _read them_.” 

Naruto winces. Yeah, he’s definitely got amends to make.

He squares his shoulders and meets her eyes head on. “Yeah, sorry Sakura. If it matters any, I didn’t mean to. I just,” he shrugs, “I just forgot, I guess.”

Sakura laughs.

Naruto doesn’t dodge the punch, this time. He figures he might deserve it, just a little.

-

Half an hour later, with a lot more bruises than he had had when he entered Konoha earlier that day, Naruto slumps into a chair in Granny Tsunade’s office with a groan. Man, does he hurt. Sakura took it easy on him (showing she does love him and has missed him lots, even though she’s super duper angry with him for forgetting a teeny tiny bit of a thing), but easy for Sakura is way harder than most other people could ever hit someone, ninja or not.

“So,” Tsunade begins. She pinches the bridge of her nose between her fingers. “Let me get this straight. You,” she says and points at Naruto, “haven’t read a single report that we’ve sent you. Because you forgot your password.”

Naruto winces at the glare she gives him. 

“I didn’t mean to?” he offers.

It does not help. Naruto is on Tora duty for the next forever, it seems like. Which is unfortunate, because cats like him just about as much as he likes vegetables.

(Naruto doesn’t like vegetables. Like, _at all_.)

Tsunade sighs explosively and mutters something about perverts and unfortunate similarities beneath her breath. 

Making an executive decision based on prior experiences, he does not ask her to elaborate.

“Well,” Tsunade says finally, “can’t say we shouldn’t have seen that one coming.”

“Hey!” Naruto protests, since that’s completely unfair and he usually remembers most things. Kind of. Most important things anyway, when they don’t have to do with _words_ and other complicated stuff.

Really, it’s not his fault he forgot the password. It was probably stupid anyway.

“What I want to know is how the _fuck_ no one noticed that he hadn’t read the reports,” she says and glares at everyone gathered in the room. 

Sakura crosses her arms beneath her… breasts? Boobs? Nicely shaped fat deposits? Naruto is not sure which word choice is best for his future health. 

He’s pretty sure, though, that it definitely isn’t among the ones he learned from Jiraiya.

“He basically only told us how and what he was doing every time. I just figured it had to do with his head being the size of a peanut, and he just couldn’t be bothered to reply to the particulars,” Sakura says, voice quieter at the end.

Ino puts her hand on Sakura’s shoulder comfortingly.

“We also assumed he was being careful, _for once_ , and chose not to discuss classified subjects through a sentient intermediary,” Ino says, glaring at Naruto over Sakura’s shoulder. 

“What she said,” Kakashi says and smiles with his eye.

Sasuke shrugs and looks indifferently around the room. “We didn’t care. Not like the moron has anything useful to say.”

“Rude,” Naruto responds with a pout. No one pays him any attention.

“I see.” Tsunade puts her hands on her desk, fingers interlocked. “I should demote all of you.”

Sakura scoffs. “Yeah, right, and pigs should fly. Without Ino taking care of buzzkill, you’d be down a village by now.”

Tsunade groans. “Don’t say things like that. You remember what happened last time you did. It got you _saddled_ with,” she grimaces, “buzzkill.”

Everyone shudders simultaneously, and the mood in the room turns dour. Ino in particular looks like she’s swallowed a very sour grape. 

“So, what happened anyway?” Naruto asks when he can’t take the suspense any longer. Given how strongly everyone’s been reacting since he’s got back, it must’ve been something spectacular. Like another invasion, or even an attack from outer space!

Naruto certainly has never heard the term _necromancer_ before, and he’s very interested in learning what it has to do with Sakura being extra grouchy.

“Oh, you know, nothing much.” Sakura says in a deadpan voice. “Sasuke here only managed to piss off an evil ghost that subsequently cursed the fuck out of our asses. No biggie.”

Naruto blinks slowly. “I see?” he says, not quite sure that he does.

Sakura rolls her eyes. “Sure you do. Basically, I now control dead people. It’s great, don’t diss it. I _will_ punch you again.”

“She absolutely will,” Ino agrees, and smiles all besotted at Sakura. “She’s amazing.”

“I see,” Naruto says again, definitely not seeing at all. Controlling dead people? _Weird_.

(He’s not going to tell Sakura that, though. He’s not _that_ dumb.)

“Good on you, I guess. Have fun ruling the world. What’s up with him, though?” Naruto asks and points at Kakashi, who’s doing the whole scratching behind his ear with his foot thing again.

Kakashi pauses in his scratching and meets Naruto’s eyes, but he doesn’t look the least bit shamefaced. Instead, he winks and goes right back to scratching.

Naruto definitely doesn’t consider the bendy aspects deeper. _Nope_.

“Oh, Kakashi just got a case of extra dog.” Sakura shrugs, like it’s no big deal. “He howls at the moon when it’s full, but other than that he’s not much weirder than he was.”

“Gai likes it,” Ino adds with a smirk.

Naruto bets he does. 

“So, you control dead people, and Kakashi gets lots of sex.” (Okay so he’s definitely thinking about it. It’s not a problem.) “And Sasuke is, what?”

“Possessed,” Tsunade says. “He’s fucking _possessed_ , and it’s an internal village security nightmare.”

Naruto gapes.

“Wait, Sasuke’s _what_?”

“Possessed,” Ino repeats, taking over for Tsunade who is busy chugging a bottle of sake. “By like, every ghost in town, one after another. Your boy’s easy like that. But that doesn’t matter, what matter is that he’s constantly _in the way_. I formally request change of mission,” she says, turning grimly to Tsunade.

“Denied,” Tsunade responds without even glancing at Ino, sounding like it’s not the first time she’s received exactly that request.

Ino pouts.

Sakura pets her soothingly on the head. 

“No, stop,” Naruto interrupts, waving his arms around himself wildly. “What do you mean he’s possessed by ghosts? Ghosts aren’t real.”

Ino snorts. “Explain that to Himeko,” she says and point to Sasuke.

The Sasuke who’s glaring at Naruto like he’s the worst person in the world (something that Sasuke does have a history of doing often and with feeling, but this particular glare feels different than the normal ones. More ice than Sasuke’s fire). “I will kill you in your sleep,” he says slowly, and then he smiles in a manner not unlike Sakura. An expression that looks extremely weird in a face that normally does little in the way of non-glary things.

Which, _holy fuck_.

Naruto laughs stiltedly and scratches at his neck. “So, ghosts, huh? Cool cool cool. Guess the old priest man knew what he was talking about, after all.” Naruto really hadn’t seen that coming. Junky priests aren’t really what he considers credible sources, 

They live in a weird world, for sure.

“So, have you tried exorcising them yet?”

Sakura blinks. “Exorcising? What the fuck are you saying, idiot?”

“Well, I mean,” he stutters and trails off, distracted by the glare increasing in intensity from Sasuke. Naruto carefully steps to hide behind Kakashi, who ignores him but doesn’t move away. “I mean, have you tried, uh, removing them? The ghosts, that is.”

Tsunade stands up behind her desk. “You know how to remove them? We’ve already tried blood rituals, mind walks, cleansing rites and all that bullshit.”

“And punching him really hard in the head,” Sakura mutters. 

Naruto blinks. “Well, yeah? Not like it’s hard.” Since the old priest was right about ghosts existing, he’s probably right about how to get rid of them, too. 

It’s like a bomb goes off. 

Sakura breaks a chair with the force of her hands on the back of it, and Ino’s just about accomplishing the same thing with Sakura’s shoulder. Which is not to mention Sasuke, who Kakashi is busy restraining as it seems his teammate is intent on throttling Naruto without either please or thank you. 

“Naruto,” Ino says sweetly. “You have ten seconds to explain how to get Sasuke un-possessed.”

Cold sweat pebbling on his skin, Naruto hesitates slightly before speaking. “Well, he just needs to, uh, get high.” 

“What do you mean, _get high_?” Tsunade demands. 

Oh dear.

“Uh, stoned? Like, smoke a joint or swallow some happy pills or something. It doesn’t really matter which kind, old priest man said any kind of high would do, really. Though some highs are more fun than others. Not like I’ve, ehe, ever gotten high myself, though. No, ma’am. I’m clean as a whistle.” 

He winces and turns his head to stare intently out of the window, trying not to think about the face Tsunade’s probably making as she digests his unfortunate word choices. He’s not getting out of Tora duty now, that’s for sure.

Turns out it isn’t Tsunade he should be worrying about, though.

“So,” Ino begins, voice dangerously sharp, “what you’re saying is that if you hadn’t been a complete _idiot_ , I could have been going down on Sakura every night for the past year? Instead of babysitting your fucking buzzkill of a teammate? _Is that what you’re saying, Naruto?_ ” 

Naruto makes the executive decision to run. 

“ _Naruto_!” Ino screams after him. “Get back here and let me punch you!”

Well, he’s definitely not doing that. Ino doesn’t like him nearly enough to pull her punches, and he’s quite bruised enough as it is.

Behind him, he hears a window shattering as someone throws themselves through it.

Naruto grins widely.

It’s good to be back.

 


End file.
